Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want

I think many times we focus on the bad habit or behavior that we want to change and that’s where our mind is, that’s where our attention is, that’s where the vision is, the pictures that we have in our mind. Now I’ll go back to the example of the person who overeats. You know they say, “I’ve got to change, I’ve got to go on a diet, I’ve got to quit eating the food.” They put all of their focus on not eating and they are constantly thinking about food, saying things to themselves like; “I can’t eat the chips and salsa. I can’t eat the chocolate cake in the fridge. I’ve got to count calories.” Their whole focus is all on food, and not eating the food.

Dominant thoughts

The problem is, the picture that you have in your mind when you’re in this mode is of food and your mind draws toward what you have pictures of in your head. Let me rephrase that, not your mind, but whatever pictures you have in your mind; that’s what you’re drawn towards. The person who wants to quit swearing for example, if he’s just constantly telling himself, “I’m not going to swear, I’m not going to swear.” The thoughts in his mind are all about swearing.
The focus can’t be on what it is your trying to stop. It’s got to be on the behavior you’re going to replace it with. So for the person who wants to change the way they look, their physical appearance, their health, they shouldn’t be focusing on not eating food. They should be focusing on what they’re going to look like in six months or a year down the road-what kind of lifestyle are they going to have? It’s got to be a lifestyle change.

“See” what you want

They can’t say, “I’m going to stop eating food for the next ten days” or “I’m going to stop eating until I’m down to a certain weight and then resume my regular lifestyle.” That’s not going to work. You’ve got to see in your mind who you’re going to become. And then once you decide what kind of life you’re going to lead, are you going to be a biker, a runner, are you going to get up and do aerobics, kick boxing, whatever it is, you need to see pictures of yourself in good health, pictures of yourself in your mind having the body, the physique that you want, looking the way you want and then move towards that picture.

Suddenly you start to make changes in your life because your current behavior is incompatible with the way you see yourself. You need to start looking, acting, walking, and talking like that person.

Now that is focusing on a small part of your entire self, your physical body. You can bring this up to even a higher level and see yourself as a completely different person, a person you have described and envisioned in every detail, the real “you” deep inside of you. You begin to change every aspect of your life. It all begins with what you are focusing your mind on on a regular basis. So be aware of your thoughts, be aware of the images and pictures you have in your mind because whatever your dominant thought is, that is what you will create in your life.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

I’m actually running on a trail right now as I tape-record my thoughts. It’s interesting that while you’re running along a trail you’re brain has the ability to look ahead and then plan where to place each foot. This seems to happen as an automatic function of the brain. I look ahead on the trail and take in what’s coming, whether it’s a rock or a stump or a curve in the trail. My brain processes that information and tells my body where to place my feet. I don’t have to think about every footstep. It’s an amazing process to me of how, by looking ahead, I know where to put my feet on the trail.

Yes, I’ve slipped up a couple of times and made some mistakes. It usually happens when I take my eyes off the trail and look in some other direction. My brain had insufficient information to tell my feet where to go; therefore I stumble and sometimes fall.

Can we relate this to life? I think so. We can’t just concentrate on what we are doing at the moment. We need to look ahead in our lives and see what’s coming and plan for it so when the time comes we’re ready. We need to process the information ahead of time so when the time comes we already know where to put our feet. The idea or concept is that of making future plans.

I like the idea and have seen benefits of sitting down on Monday morning and looking at my whole week, seeing what’s going on each day and thinking about it and planning ahead. If I see a presentation coming up on Thursday I know I can’t start on that presentation on Thursday. I’ve got to begin preparing and working on it ahead of time.

In this way I think trail running is like life. We need to look ahead and plan in advance in order for our feet to be planted properly in the here and now. You’re todays will go much better when you look ahead at your tomorrows.

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

Now here is the entire photo:

The close-up was of my face. I’m the baby in my father’s arms. What a difference it makes to step back and take in the whole picture.

My hike this morning reminded me of this. I live in my little house on my little street and that becomes my world. Sometimes I forget there is a whole big world out there. When I go hiking in the morning I go up the side of the mountain by my home and suddenly I have this magnificent view of my whole community. I see things I never could have seen at the street level. There are ponds in my community that I didn’t know existed. There are neighborhoods, golf courses, and churches that I didn’t know were there. It’s a whole different perspective when I get the Big Picture from on the mountain.

You’ve heard of the saying:

You can’t see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes we get that way with our own lives. We are so into our own little world that we don’t realize that there is a whole, big world out there. We are blinded by the things that are so close to us.

I find that I periodically need to get away from the nitty gritty details of my life. I need to step back and look at the Big Picture to get a true perspective of life.

One of the ways my wife Lisa and I do this is to go away to an educational conference every year or so. It is held in another city several hours from our home. It’s called Education Week and as the name implies, it is a week long conference and is held at a university. They have classes all day long each day on subjects like marriage, parenting, money management, stress management, journal writing – you name it and they have a class for it. We stay there the whole week and take all kinds of classes together, taking voracious notes in each one.

Some people think we’re strange to do this with our precious time, yet we have found it well worth it. And every time we have done it and are on our way home, I always get the feeling that I have been lifted high above the detailed cares of the world and have a grand, panoramic view of life. It helps me get my life in perspective.

I suggest that you find ways to step away from the details of your life and allow yourself to see the Big Picture. Take a break. Go on a needed vacation. Retreat to the mountains or the beach or the desert and take time to think and ponder. Let’s not miss the beautiful forest while we are staring at the roots of the trees.

Thank you.
Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

Where do you begin?

So what does that mean? Let’s say a person is fairly miserable because their life isn’t going so good. They might say to themselves, “Well, that’s all fine and dandy but what does that mean to me? What am I supposed to do? How do I make that happen in my life?”

Find out what you want

The first thing you have to do is figure out what you really want. What is it you desire? If you had an Aladdin’s lamp and you could rub that lamp and have whatever you want, what would it be? If you had a magic wand, what would you change about yourself? What would you have, what would you do, who would you be? Of course we’re talking about staying within the realm of possibility, meaning a leopard shouldn’t wish that he had stripes or a zebra shouldn’t wish he had spots. It’s not going to happen. But within the realm of possibility, what is it that you want?

Spend a day to dream, ponder, pray and think about what your true desires are. Make notes and brainstorm. Go off by yourself and design the life you truly want.

Define it in great detail

If it’s a house you want, don’t just say I want a house. Figure out where you want to live, what that house is going to look like, how many rooms it has. If it’s an amount of money you want to be making then figure out exactly how much money you want to make. If it’s a character trait that you want to have then define exactly what that character trait is and what a person who has that character trait would be like.

When you’re defining what you want, you want to do more than just write it down or make a brief description. You need to be very detailed and thorough in your description. This is like an architect designing a building or a ship captain charting his course. It can’t be vague or general. You are creating a blueprint of your future life.

Review it daily

Once you have this picture of who you want to be, what you want to have and what you want to do, then you can begin. The idea is to review this blueprint every day. Imagine that you are already that person and that you already have these things. What you’re doing is spending time focusing on your end result. Let’s talk about how to do this.

You need to have a daily session where you spend time by yourself, preferably in a quiet room. Perhaps it’s in the morning or maybe it’s in the evening. Maybe it’s at noon. Find the best time for you to spend time alone where you can review in great detail your future life. Dim the lights, relax, get comfortable, close your eyes and start imagining. See yourself as that person, being that person, having those things and accomplishing what you would like to accomplish. See it, feel it, experience it. Feel the emotion.

If you want to learn to sail, experience yourself in the sailboat, at the rudder, the smell of the salt, the mist of the waves splashing against the boat, the wind in the sails, the rocking of the boat. Be there and experience it. If it’s a character trait you desire to have, see yourself possessing that character trait. See yourself acting and behaving as if you were already that person. The idea is to picture and experience in great detail and with great emotion those things that you desire.

Take action

But that’s not all. You can’t just be wishing and dreaming all the time. You need to be doing things and taking action. You need to arrange your life to be able to receive these desires of your heart. You have to start acting and behaving like that person, like you already have these things.

Final thoughts on the Law of Attraction

This series of articles have explored many aspects of the Law of Attraction. I’ve really only scratched the surface of this subject but I hope that what I have shared with you has been helpful in seeing the Law of Attraction in a different light.

Wallace D. Wattles said it so well:

The picture of your desires, held with faith and purpose, is taken up by the Formless, and permeates it to great distances-throughout the universe, for all I know. As this impression spreads, all things are set moving toward its realization; every living thing, every inanimate thing, and the things yet uncreated, are stirred toward bringing into being that which you want. All force begins to be exerted in that direction; all things begin to move toward you. The minds of people, everywhere, are influenced toward doing the things necessary to the fulfilling of your desires; and they work for you, unconsciously.

Look at the world around you. Look at your present circumstances. Look at who you are. Then realize that you have been the creator of it by what you have persistently desired over time through the thoughts and yearnings of your heart. If you don’t like what you see then use this great law which says that we can alter our destinies by altering our thoughts.

Thank you.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

You can read the first five articles in this series here:

The Law of Attraction Part 1 – My Take

The Law of Attraction Part 2 – It’s No Secret

The Law of Attraction Part 3 – Examples

The Law of Attraction Part 4 – Two Creations

The Law of Attraction Part 5 – Is It Science?

What Are Thoughts?

When you think about thoughts, what are they really? They can put electronic measuring devices on individuals and measure the electrical impulses of their minds and they can detect different frequencies and impulses depending on what thoughts the person is thinking. There is energy there.

So they can measure thoughts – big deal! So what does that mean? When you think about everything in the universe and what it’s made of, you start to understand. As was illustrated in The Secret DVD, in this universe there are galaxies. Within galaxies are stars. Circling those stars are planets. On this planet there are living things, such as people. Within people there are functioning organs such as the heart and liver and kidneys. The organs in turn are made out of cells. Each cell is made from molecules. Each molecule is made from atoms. When you go deeper than that, what are atoms made of? At the deepest level we see that every atom is made up of energy. Einstein wrote out an equation: E=MC2 meaning all matter is energy and all energy is matter. So at the deepest level everything in this universe including yourself and what you are made of is energy.

Thoughts Are Things

The idea and the concept is that our thoughts are energy. Well if energy is matter then our thoughts are real things – they are made up of matter. As we think, we think in frequencies or waves – energy waves. Everything in this universe is made up of energy waves. If you examine a simple rock at its deepest level you find that it is made up of atoms and those atoms are moving. There is energy in there and it’s moving and it’s moving at a certain frequency. Everything moves at different frequencies.

The idea is that when we think we create different kinds of frequencies and these frequencies have the ability to go beyond our brain, beyond our physical body and transfer through the air, through the expanse of the universe. Is there a limitation on where it can travel or how it can travel? I don’t believe there is.

Can Thoughts Travel?

I happen to believe in prayer. When we pray to God what is it we are really doing? We are thinking thoughts. We are exerting mental energy. We are generating, feelings, visions and emotions and directing them to God. This is just as scientific as any other law of nature. We can communicate.

When people talk about the Law of Attraction they refer to the Universe or Infinite Intelligence. There are many names they have given to God, the creator of all things, the one who holds all knowledge, the one who is aware of every particle and every atom in this universe and what is happening with it. There is nothing that happens that escapes God’s attention. He has the ability to see all, to comprehend all. He is aware of all things. So if we pray we are generating thoughts and sending them out to the universe and in my estimation we are sending them out to God. I said earlier that God created all the natural laws that we abide by – the laws of physics, of chemistry, of gravity, etc. They were all created by God. He is aware of those laws. He put them in motion and He enforces those laws.

What I’m trying to say is that when you think you generate energy at certain frequencies and that energy goes out into the universe. God is aware of it and following God’s laws which He cannot alter and which He Himself must follow or He would cease to be God, you receive what you think about.

Let’s Explore the Possibilities

Perhaps I can illustrate. When I talked earlier about thoughts and how they are vibrations of energy and that they emit a frequency and can travel outside our bodies, you may have had your doubts. You may have thought, “Yes, but the level of energy is so small and so imperceptible that how could a thought really go out even beyond your own brain? Can it really be possible?” Those are serious challenges to these ideas.

We’ll look at one example. In 1977 NASA launched two space probes named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Their mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn and was intended to last five years. The mission was more than a success and the spacecraft continued to travel into space well beyond five years. Now, 30 years later, they continue to probe the universe on their unprecedented journeys. The Voyager 1 spacecraft is currently the farthest man-made object from earth. Its current distance from the Sun is 9.7 billion miles and continues to travel into space at the rate of 1 million miles per day.

So why do we care about this? Just ponder for a moment the fact that people on earth are communicating with a spacecraft billions of miles from earth. How is that possible? Each Voyager spacecraft uses a high-gain antenna that communicates with earth using a 23-watt transmitter. 23-watts is less than ¼ the power of a common 100-watt light bulb you use in your house. By the time the signal reaches earth it is so weak that a modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater. Yet we are able to decipher that signal and communicate with these spacecraft and send and receive trillions of bits of information. It’s almost incomprehensible that an intelligent being here on earth can communicate with and direct and control a device so far away. Yet we do it every day.

Your Personal Communications System

If puny Man can do that with his technology, what can God do with His technology? I submit to you that your God-given personal communications system is vastly superior to anything Man has come up with. I encourage you to not doubt that these things can be. The technology we have today would have been seen as magic and miracles and impossible to people only one-hundred years ago. Let’s not be so amazed at things we don’t fully understand now. Let’s learn from it and use it to better our lives today.

Thank you.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

You can read the first four articles in this series here:

The Law of Attraction Part 1 – My Take

The Law of Attraction Part 2 – It’s No Secret

The Law of Attraction Part 3 – Examples

The Law of Attraction Part 4 – Two Creations